Reply to Are you offended when someone says they “didnt want someone else to raise my kids”?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]To be fair, women who aren't motherly or patient by nature, wouldn't their kids be better off getting raised by fathers, grandparents or hired help?[/quote]

Just don’t call it raising. It hurts too many feelings. Call it something like “spending significant awake hours with” and you have to assume almost nothing happens during that time.[/quote]

That doesn’t work because some SAHM think being there during nap time is significant to their kids lives and some colder so they are literally in bed with them.[/quote]

Working mom here and I actually do think there is value when kids are very young (babies) to being near or with parents when they are napping. My sister is a developmental psychologist and turned me onto both attachment theory and the idea of "co-regulation" as a way to teach kids how to regulate emotions. The safety and security of sleeping in the vicinity of a parent as a baby may have real value to the parent-child relationship, and babies who learn to calm by co-regulating their bodies (breathing, heart rate) with a calm adult may do a better job calming themselves as they grow older due to modeling.

I was able to cobble together a European-style maternity leave (4 mo paid leave from generous employer, 1 week stored vacation and sick leave, 4 mo unpaid leave, and a 3 month "on ramp" where I started with just two mornings a week and then built back up to 32 hours adding both in-office and WFH hours) and I'm a real believer in the value of being physically present for very young children. And I stayed at 32 hours so even now I have a ton of flexibility-- if I didn't I'd probably seriously consider being a SAHM at least until my kid was older. But I recognize this is not a realistic option for most parents, including my DH who wanted to take a longer leave (and we could have afforded it even if unpaid) but his employer gave it a hard no. I was extremely fortunate to do what I did.

I wouldn't blink or be offended if a SAHM told me she wanted to stay home because she "didn't want someone else raising" her kids. I get it. I think in an ideal world you wouldn't have to choose but in the US you often do. I view it as a criticism of US's lack of supports for the parents of young kids and poor options for childcare. Work culture in the US is generally very anti-family and anti-child specifically. We have done very little as a family to enable families to engage in "best practices" in terms of early childhood development.[/quote]

How many kids do you have and what is the spacing?  Did you, or do you plan to, do something like this for each one?[/quote]

PP here and I wound up only having one kid because I had secondary infertility and now I am too old for another kid. But yes the plan was to do this exact schedule with the second. This is of course only made possible because I work for an organization that permits it -- we offer 4 months of paid leave to all parents (men and women and includes adoptive parents as well as people who are the primary caregivers to adults who need full time care) and the leave policy explicitly allows for people to take up to a year total of leave (inclusive of the paid leave though the rest would be unpaid) and keep their jobs and we have procedures in place to re-integrated folks who have taken extended leaves. I've had two people on my team take similar leaves in the last 6 years including one who is a dad but is the primary parent and we've worked it out.

It's the only way something like this is possible. Though I did make some friends during my leave who essentially did the same thing by quitting their prior jobs and then taking a year off and then going back to work in new jobs. That's much more stressful but it at least allows for the time off. Someone upthread mentioned knowing a lot of women who did something similar taking off 1-3 years and then returning to work -- I don't think this is what anyone is thinking of when they think "SAHP" but I actually think it's the most common iteration of it because financially giving up a second income is so hard for a family and also personally I don't know a lot of people who want to be at home once kids are school age.[/quote]

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